Tuesday, June 27, 2006

"The Joy Of Language" Dept

Dave Barry starts with this paragraph:

Jack Bauer is being held captive aboard a freighter by Chinese actors who are still ticked off about a subplot from the previous season that most of us don't even remember. Audrey is still devastated. Edgar is still dead.
He then uses helpful translation software for the benefit of those of his readers who are more at home in French or German or Greek, and then reminds us, still with the help of that translation software, that:

The handle of the farmer is kept for collected with pinakj' da of a plane nay' loy of participants of the Chinese who still becomes with TAC-TICK roughly an assembly of the second degree excluded from preceding the time that the majority between us does not remember even above. The Audrey is still destroyed. Edgar still died.
It's particular fun for me because all three of those languages are languages that I knew in college and don't know anymore; but wading through each successive stage I can just barely make out each place where a phrase goes off the rails. Though it's not as much fun as all that because it's a very forceful reminder that I do not, in fact, still know any of those three languages.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home